Drawing Spaces is a project space located at Fábrica Braço de Prata, in Lisbon, that seeks to promote investigative practices related to the subject of drawing. This project supports collaborations between artists and researchers from Portugal and artists and researchers from abroad. Drawing Spaces involves several artistic residencies and exhibitions; a series of lectures and debates; and various activities for specialized and non-specialized public related to the subject of drawing.

IT IS FORBIDDEN TO DRAW ON PAPER!Pedro António Janeiro13 April – 7 May 2011

“A drawing is an object. To
draw is to enlarge the world.I recall a child drawing on
the floor with brush and water in a micro-cement courtyard. With water he would
start saying, through lines and
blotches, birds, houses, landscapes; he would draw what he saw; he would made
up private mythologies; and pointing to the drawing he would said: “That’s me”.
When the drawing was big, he would climb up a loquat overlooking the patio to
see the drawing from up. One day, dazzled by what he saw while naming “me” to
what he saw, he fell and broke his arm. The next day, the tree was not there
anymore: it had been cut down right by the root. This image always impressed
me.I remember Piotr: Piotr was a
Polish animated cartoon, intelligent, but very joyful. Piotr, with his yellow
dog, each time faced by a peril, had an elf appearing to him who would lend him
“the magic pencil”. This pencil with which Piotr drew on the ground had the
power to materialize everything that Piotr drew and wish for: if a pair of
white wings, Icarus; if a sailboat, a sailor; if a beach, a castaway. I recall drawings made with
the fingertips over the dust of car hoods; on the steamed windshields.I recall drawings made with a
piece of chalk on the black asphalt; the hand of a man imprinted or blown in
ocher on the Lascaux walls.A drawing al vif (“after nature”), amongst other things, is a kind of
fragment that I cut off and steal from reality. To draw is an accepted theft:
because that which drawing steals is returned twice as much, or even more, by
the drawing itself to the stolen reality. The product of my plunder is yet
another object in the world: my drawing is my theft and my surrender. I state
that I take, but I know that I give.If I draw over a paper, I
steal and take the stolen reality under my arm. Interesting would be if that
drawing that I make of that which I say
that I see would be abandoned at the crime scene; if that drawing, which is
another object in the world, would feed that reality that accepts to be stolen
by the eyes (so that others, when seeing it, would also see it through one of
its drawings; or, if drawn by them, they would draw it by drawing also my
drawing) – this assuming the chosen media as fixed, like a wall, the asphalt,
the glass of a window, etc; or yet, as an alternative, interesting would be if
the chosen media was movable, like a car hood or a leaf of a tree, where the constructed
drawing could travel away from here, making known the stolen-here. But why not
on paper?Because paper forces me to
frame that which I see according to preset criteria pre-established by its
dimension and standardize format. If I do not draw on paper, I have the whole
world to construct my drawing on, without limits. The dimension, the scale to
which I draw, I pick them myself. Even before drawing becomes a drawing,
paper already predicts it. The square and the rectangle want to be exposed.My drawing is the narrow
bridge over the precipice that separates me from things. Only this makes it
worthwhile to draw, because drawing is to stretch the body and touch things,
themselves as lived by me, in me. Perhaps this is why nowadays I
have picked the palms of my hands and my own skin as supports for my drawings.
Without paper or other surface, I gain more: I gain that sort of seduction that
that who draws gets to know when feeling the confrontation of the tip of the
pencil or pen with the intervened surface. Thus, I draw twice, for I feel the
drawing happening in the hand that draws, and in the hand that consents the
drawing. My body is my beginning and my end, my drawing is my resurrection.Draw me a bird on sepia with a
single lineIn the shell that the palms of
my hands are,That flies higher than
Painting,That is not afraid to sink,That makes a helm out of
illusion,That takes me for a princeAs certain asAll this blood of mineOpal made of stone.A branch that I findAt a beach of wondersIn all similar to a bull at a
pagan place:In blaknesses,Whitenesses that make shiverAnd ashes of human flesh
without smell,With nothing, between lilacs.I taste the blood in my mouth,For all the longing,From seeing children desperate
as I’ve been,At a cornerImagining the worldWith the most supremely
certainty that they have not even existed,WaitingFor the knife to wound them,But without pain,At the center of the centerOf that which make their eyes
seeWhile mourning flowersUnder a ceiling of clouds that
roll denseCries of angelsWhich have been burnt, through
the power of fireThe eyesBecause I feed myself from the
depth [darkness] that the world offers me.”Pedro António Janeiro

The
purpose of this project is to invite the participants to draw in supports other
than paper; using non conventional materials. People are invited to draw, for
example, on the asphalt, on the wall, on tree leaves, on the dust of cars (with
ephemeral and non mutilating materials), on the ground, etc. On a second phase
of the project, the artist will use his body as an interface for drawing.Pedro António Janeiro, Lisbon, 1974.Graduated from the Faculty of
Architecture at the Technical University of Lisbon (F.A./U.T.L.), 1998; Master
in Contemporary Architectonic Culture and
Construction of the Modern City, F.A./U.T.L., 2003; Doctor in Architecture, speciallized in Theory of
Architecture, F.A./U.T.L., 2008; teaches Drawing at the Faculty of Architecture
from the Technical University of Lisbon since 1997; wrote various scientific
papers and published the following books: Perspectivas
(e Outras-Imagens) da Arquitectura I e II;
Azul em Coma [Perspective (and
Other-Images) of Architecture I and II]; Origens e Destino da Imagem, para uma fenomenologia da Arquitectura
Imaginada [Origins and Destin of the Image, towards a phenomenology of the
Imagined Architecture]; Desenhos a
Éter [Ether Drawings]; A Imagem
Por-Escrita (prelo) [The image
In-Written].